Bulldogs to play first home game of season

Road warriors is what the Moffat County High School girls varsity basketball team was for the first four games of the season. At 6 p.m. Saturday, the Bulldogs will bring their game back home against the Roaring Fork Rams at the high school gym.

The freshmen will start the day at 2:30 p.m. and the junior varsity team will follow at 4 p.m.

The varsity Bulldogs come into the game with a 2-2 record and Bulldogs coach Craig Mortensen is satisfied with the way things have gone.

"We are fairly pleased with the way things have gone and the only thing better would be 3-1," said Mortensen. "We left the Vernal, Utah, tournament with some pretty good confidence.

"We are so young that we are going to get better and better each time out."

The Bulldogs will need that confidence inside against the Rams.

"Roaring Fork will try and to do a post-up game," said Mortensen. "They have two big girls and so they will try to go into the post. I think that we can up tempo this game."

A defensive "change up" has been helping the Bulldogs, according to Mortensen.

"We have been changing our defense a lot and that has been helping us," said Mortensen. "They are playing good help side and they are pressuring the ball."

Players who will see time on the varsity team this weekend will be senior Michele Donnel and juniors Krystal Voorhees, Emily Mortensen, Heather Urbanowski, Stacy Ponikvar and Jennifer Havrilla. Sophomores will be Amber Sanchez, Jessica Norman and Ashleigh Gregg.

"We have junior varsity girls who are playing good and you never know," said Mortensen. "If they show us that they are ready we will put anybody in."

Donnel, the lone senior on the team, believes the Bulldogs are starting to gel with each other.

"I think at first we started the season kind of slow because we really didn't play well together," said Donnel. "As we started to play more games things have started to pick up and we are coming together.

"Being so young a lot of the girls haven't had a lot of varsity experience and we will improve each day."